RAF Changi 1950s

[D120A]

Zerofeetaboveground,

You said in your first post that you thought your grandfather was involved with servicing radio equipment. He would have been a Corporal Technician, and would either have worked in a radio bay, an area where such equipment was repaired and serviced, or on the squadron's 'first line', which is where aircraft are prepared for flight and rectified when they return with a defect after flight.

Given that your grandfather was flying that day, I suspect he was a first line radio man, and was probably a very proud member of 48 Sqn. (If he had worked in RAF Changi's air radio bay, he would have been in Tech Wing). When an unserviceable radio was reported, he would have first tested it in the aircraft on the ground and, if it could not be made to work, he would have diagnosed the defective component, removed it and sent it back to the bay. He would have fitted another in its place, then tested the new set-up to check that it was all now working correctly.

In those days, radios were not like today's, where you dial up a frequency and confidently expect to talk to someone on it! Radios then had crystals, one crystal for each frequency, and those crystals would be a push-fit into the body of the radio. The frequencies so fitted would be selected one at a time by changing a rotary stud switch on the pilots' or navigator's control boxes, and the radio checked by using a test set. (If you didn't have a test set because you were a long way from home up country somewhere, your grandfather would have known the secret of connecting a light bulb across the transmitter output, rather than the test set. When the bulb glowed brightest, the set was tuned! You didn't hear that from me...)

Often a radio only had a few channels, so crystals would be changed according to the journey being planned. They were valuable and had to be accounted for - any issued to you were signed for, and any you removed you took back to the bay and got a signature for them!

If that fatal flight was a flight test after a period of aircraft servicing in the hangar, your grandfather's job as the squadron line radio man would have been to test all the radio frequencies fitted, to ensure all the boxes in the radio system worked and the crystals were good ones. From the scenario described, it sounds as if none of the crew got very far into their test schedule before the extreme weather caused the accident.

I hope that helps you and your family. I know from being in the business for a long time that it doesn't matter whether it was 58 years or 58 days ago, it always hurts.